Thursday, 31 May 2018

Extract from Mine by Susi Fox

Debut novelist and GP Susi Fox's Mine
is a chilling, unnervingly real portrayal of the darker side of
motherhood. Sasha wake up in hospital after an emergency caesarean and is
handed a baby boy, but immediately a chilling realisation hits her, this baby
is not hers. What follows is a terrifyingly vivid account of a woman’s struggle
against the systems that have been put in place to protect her – doctors,
counsellors, even her own family – but what happens when none of these systems
believe you? Everyone is against you; do you trust your instincts? Or is your
traumatic past clouding your judgement?As
her reality appears to spiral out of control, Sasha begins to question her own
sanity. But she’s a doctor – surely she would know if she were losing her mind?

As part of the Mine blog tour Shots his pleased to be hosting below an extract from the novel today. -

---------------

‘You’ve worked in a
nursery before, I take it?’

Ursula says. I nod, even though it was only
for a short time and long ago, during my paediatrics term as a medical
resident. Like all young doctors, I rotated through multiple specialties,
trying to find the one that suited me best. Obstetrics, paediatrics, emergency,
psychiatry, among others. Ursula doesn’t need to know how little I remember of
those early days; how much I’ve blocked from my mind. There must be twenty or
so infants in here. I have no idea where my baby is.

‘Here we are,’ Ursula
says, tugging me to a stop beside a humidicrib on the left, beside the window.
‘Your baby.’ My heart skips a beat. Part of me doesn’t want to look. I fixate
on the outside of the humidicrib. It’s an unfamiliar model: matt-grey base with
a rail strung along the side, see-through plastic over the top like a snow
globe, enclosing another world. A rectangle of blue card is sticky-taped to the
cot wall in front of me, coming unstuck at one corner.

Name: _________________

Baby of: Sasha Moloney

Sex: Male

Then a list of numbers: his weight, date and
time of birth. I have to bend around the card to see him. There are wires taped
to his chest, a tube emerging from his nose. He’s tiny – smaller, even, than
the teddy I bought him, waiting in the cot back home.

His chest sucks in
between his ribs, his abdomen ailing with each breath. He doesn’t look
comfortable. His arms and legs are kindling-thin, with wads of padding at the
knees and elbows for him to grow into, his skin almost translucent with purple
streams of veins beneath. He looks like he’s struggling. Like he knows he
should still be inside my womb. Him being born prematurely – I blame myself. As
his mother, the one who was supposed to keep him safe, I know it’s my fault.
Yet despite my guilt, there’s no stirring in my chest, no tightening of my
heart.

He doesn’t look like the baby who appeared in
my pregnancy dreams. I stare at him as I would any other premature newborn. I
don’t feel like his mother at all. Fleetingly, I’m struck by a terrible idea:
what if this isn’t my baby? But I reorder my thoughts, pushing that
inconceivable notion to the back of my mind.

Mine by Susi Fox published by Penguin on 14th June 2018 (£7.99)

The baby in the cot is not your baby. You wake
up alone after an emergency caesarean, desperate to see your child. But when
you are shown the small infant, a terrible thought seizes you: this baby is not
yours. They say you’re delusional. No one believes you. Not the nurses, your
father or even your own husband. They say you’re confused, potentially
dangerous. But you’re a doctor – you know how easily mistakes can be made. Or
perhaps it isn’t a mistake? Everyone is against you; do you trust your
instincts? Or is your traumatic past clouding your judgements? You know only
one thing… You must find your baby.